Minnesota’s final poll predictions: The odds-on favorites in today’s elections

It’s wise not to trust the polls. They’re an inexact science based on who voted last time, blended with an educated guess on who might show today. And any attempt to quantify human nature is bound to get messy.

Then comes the question of whether the young will finally exercise their demographic might. Or if women, who already vote at high rates, are pissed enough to push them higher. Or if conservatives, distrustful of “fake news” and “fake polls,” are accurately represented in the numbers.

So we turn now to FiveThirtyEight, the site run by America’s leading super nerd, Nate Silver. During the past few election cycles, he’s proven to be among the best in the country at picking winners. Instead of relying on a single poll, he weights a range of surveys, then merges them with heavy data to call the outcomes (see methodology here).

He may not be perfect, but he tends to be close. Here are Silver’s calls: